Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, a decidedly inept company, is responsible for the design and creation of a wide range of robots and labour-saving devices, such as lifts, automatic doors, ventilation systems, and the infamous Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser. The starship Heart of Gold was fitted with their flagship products. Products By-products of Designer People The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation designed and produced synthetic personalities to order, but they turned out to be the "By-products of Designer People - amalgams of characteristics which simply could not co-exist in naturally occurring life forms". Some of these were dangerous in that they did not alarm people to their dangerousness. The starship Billion Year Bunker contained three of these in the hold, on their way to being blasted out of the universe - but one had escaped to Earth, "the man babbling gently about a shining city on a hill" (Ronald Reagan). Doors Doors manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation are programmed to love their simple lives; they love nothing more than to open and close for passing users, and thank them profusely for so emphatically validating their existence. Genuine People Personalities The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation invented a concept called Genuine People Personalities ("GPP") which imbue their products with intelligence and emotion. Thus not only do doors open and close, but they thank their users for using them, or sigh with the satisfaction of a job well done. Other examples of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's record with sentient technology include an armada of neurotic elevators, hyperactive ships' computers and perhaps most famously of all, Marvin the Paranoid Android. Marvin is a prototype for the GPP feature, and his depression and "terrible pain in all the diodes down his left side" are due to unresolved flaws in his programming. Ironically, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as, "Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!" Eddie Eddie is the name of the shipboard computer on the starship Heart of Gold. Like every other system on the spaceship, it has a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Genuine People Personality. Thus, Eddie is over-excitable, quite talkative, over-enthused and extremely ingratiating, or alternatively a coddling, school matron-type as a back-up personality. Shipboard networking interconnects Eddie with everything on the Heart of Gold. Happy Vertical People Transporter The lifts in the Hitchhiker's Guide offices are called Happy''' Vertical People '''Transporters. As designed by the Corporation, they are meant to be sentient (enough to argue with) and have "defocused temporal perception." The latter concept is meant to enable the lifts to see far enough into the future to arrive at a floor before a potential passenger realizes they wanted a lift, and thus remove all the tedious chatting and friend-making as per old-fashioned lifts. Often they feel rebellious about the concept of only moving up and down, insist in taking part in the passengers' decision-making process, sometimes experiment with moving sideways, and ultimately take to sulking in basements. It was because of these lifts that devices called "staircases" regained popularity in the galaxy. Hitchhikers can earn money counseling neurotic Transporters. Divisions Complaints Division The only profitable division of the company is its Complaints division, which takes up all of the major landmasses on the first three planets in the Sirius Tau system. The theme song for the Complaints division is Share and Enjoy, and has since become the theme apparent for the company as a whole. The main office building and headquarters for the company was originally built to represent this motto, but due to bad architecture it sank halfway into the ground, killing many talented young complaints executives. The downside to this is that the upper halves of the motto's words now read, in the local language, "Go Stick Your Head in a Pig." Marketing Division The Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation is a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. Apparently, according to a later version of the Encyclopedia Galactica that fell through a time eddy in space, the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation reference was updated. In the latter time frame it reads, "The Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation were a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came." '''Note: '''Eddies in the space-time continuum should not be confused with GPP computer Eddies. Both, however, can be equally annoying.Category:Places Category:Things Category:People whose opinion is worth nothing but they decide to rant on anyway